Clouds Episode 4

Another instalment in the increasingly chaotic short story serial.

Cindy: I could have been a herbalist. I wanted to be – I even got as far as finding a course but like everything else Chas put the kibosh on it. He said herbalism was airy-fairy and unscientific. ‘Besides, it’s dirty. Picking plants with your bare hands, bringing all that muck into the house!’ Chas hates anything to do with outdoors. I’ve still studied though and I know lots of plants now, all the common British ones and their uses. Comfrey for bruising and ligaments, echinacea for colds and flu, red clover for eczema and asthma, sage for drying up breast milk when you’re weaning…

People are surprised when I say he does all the cleaning; they have him down as the typical patriarch, not lifting a finger. The truth is, he doesn’t trust me to do it properly. I don’t clean under the sofa; I leave dirt behind the taps. Germs live in dirt. I say that scientifically we need a bit of dirt to boost our immune system. We all have to eat a peck of dirt, I say. He’s not buying it.

So his hedge fund’s gone; so what? I could never see the point of it; we’ve got insurance and savings and god knows what else so why would we need yet another contingency fund?

Herbalism isn’t dirty anyway. Mostly they use tinctures and they’re made with alcohol. I’d have loved to be a herbalist. It would be something to pass on to our children, like Mum taught me.

The smell of bleach is starting to get to me. He must go through a couple of bottles a week.

I’ve been spending more time downstairs this week, in preparation. My whole life is under those floorboards and one day soon I’ll be taking it with me, lock stock and barrel. I’ll be gone and there’ll be nothing he can do about it.

A short one today as it’s Friday and I‘ve run out of ideas.

Kirk out

Whose Bright Idea was That?

Well? Whose bright idea was it to write a short story without knowing where it’s going? Who thought that one up, I’d like to know? I’m finding it quite hard but then again it’s sort of exhilarating not having a clue what’s going to happen until you write it. OH bought me a journal for my birthday with lots of writing exercises in it; what I like about it is that not only does it give you lots of prompts and short exercises but examines the psychological barriers which get in the way of writing.

https://shorturl.at/utCfc

This is invaluable as nine times out of ten it’s not practical problems which get in the way but psychological obstacles. So I guess the idea arose out of these exercises, to write a serial where from day to day the unfolding is a mystery. Normally when I’m writing a story I do a lot of thinking ahead and trying to make it coherent. Not this time. It’s quite fun if you stop asking yourself whether it makes sense.

Making sense is the bane of my life when I’m writing; instead of being imaginative my logical brain leaps in all the time and says ‘does this make sense? Is it rational?’ I’m not in this game to be rational – at least not most of the time.

Last night we watched the first episode of Douglas is Cancelled on ITV. Starring Hugh Bonneville, Karen Gillan and Ben Miles it deals with cancel culture and how things can spiral out of control once a public figure is seen to have an Achilles heel. One half of TV news couple Douglas, a white man in his fifties paired with a woman twenty years younger (does this format ever change?) gets into deep water when he’s overheard telling a sexist joke at a wedding. Leaving aside my feelings about sexist jokes (we never actually learn what the joke was) is it relevant to the presenter’s job? Should someone be whiter-than-white before we accept them on TV? What should end someone’s career?

In all the noise of culture wars nuance is lost, and I’m hoping we’ll find some in this series, though it’s primarily a comedy. Madeleine, Douglas’s co-host, is clearly manipulative but maybe she feels she needs to be in such a male world. Simon Russell Beale is horribly good as Douglas’s Machiavellian agent – almost as repellent as his Beria in The Death of Stalin – and Douglas’s family are also great fun. So whatever your views on woke culture give it a watch.

https://www.itv.com/watch/douglas-is-cancelled/10a4088

Episode four of the increasingly chaotic short story serial will be up later.

Kirk out